by EMILY MEISLER, guest reviewer …This is a practise As full of labor as a wise man’s art, For folly that he wisely shows is fit. But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit. -Viola, Twelfth Night In Act III of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare offers a warning to any potential fools in the audience. Substitute “fool”…
The Minnesota Opera is inviting readers to purchase $20 tickets to Hamlet for tonight, March 5! Here is a link to our review, and check out the offer details below. You can also see preview videos on the MN Opera’s YouTube channel! $20 tickets* to Hamlet Tuesday, March 5 Use code blog20 Visit mnopera.org for a show synopsis and…
by MICHAEL J. OPPERMAN The bones of the story will be familiar to anyone who has taken a survey course in English literature. Hamlet, the heir to the throne of Denmark sees the ghost of his father who demands that his son avenge his death. The tricky thing is that, according to this ghost, the…
by LIZ PANTING, guest reviewer Are you ever at the theatre and feel bored before the curtain goes up? Do you find yourself thinking all plays are starting to look the same? Go see a PuppetLab show at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. Something in it will take you off…
By Mira Reinberg Propeller, an all-male London-based Shakespeare company, burst on the stage at the Guthrie Theatre with a revived production of The Taming of the Shrew, and gave the audience a taste of Elizabethan theatricality: a performance that fuses physical action, linguistic sparkle, and arresting story into a spectacle of colorful éclat. And did…
By MIRA REINBERG As spectators of television or theater we are lured by the sheer possibilities of delectation that are accessible to the very rich, even as we scoff at the disproportionate luxury surrounding them and ridicule their lifestyle of pampered oblivion. Molly Smith Metzler’s “class war” play, Elemeno Pea, inserts us into the emblematic…
by LIZ PANTING, guest reviewer Girl Shorts is a festival of short plays all written by women playwrights, focusing on female characters. Each night of the festival, which runs from February 23-March 3, features 5 one-act plays, and certain evenings also feature live music after the show by Missing Peace, Lingua Luna, and Courtney McLean of the…
Ever sat through a bad play? Afraid you’re about to? Never fear: we have tips to make the theater-going experience fun, no matter what appears on the stage. by JIM JOHNS, guest writer There are two ways to look at going to the theater. The first way is to condemn yourself to the evening and hope…
by EMILY MEISLER, guest reviewer After exiting the Saturday night production of Red Resurrected, I turned to my friend who accompanied me to the production and asked, “So, what did you think?” She paused. “It was good.” She smiled politely. “It was well done….but I’m not a theater person.” There are some beautiful moments in Red…
by CHRISTINE SARKES SASSEVILLE Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities is a cunningly crafted family drama set in a plush Palm Springs living room. The play, directed by Peter Rothstein at the Guthrie Theater is superbly acted and written, with powerhouse female performances by Sally Wingert, as Polly, the Wyeth family matriarch, Michelle Barber, as her sister Silda,…
